Otto Henry Bacher, the American at the Vendôme with *A Siesta* (1881)

Extremely rare on the market—and even more so in France—Otto Henry Bacher makes his debut at Vendôme with this 1881 painting, *Sieste *. The work blends Impressionism with influences from James McNeill Whistler.

The way the light is rendered in this charming scene—which blends landscape with an intimate moment—as well as the depiction of the figures, is reminiscent of the work of a certain James McNeill Whistler. When Otto Henry Bacher painted this work in 1881, he was living in Venice. The American artist, originally from Cleveland, had decided to leave for Europe in 1878. His first stop was Munich, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts alongside Willis Seaver Adams and became part of a colony of American painters founded by Frank Duveneck in Polling (Bavaria). He then traveled across the continent and arrived in Venice c. 1880, where Whistler was living to fulfill a commission from the Fine Art Society of London to produce a series of engravings of the city. Bacher was also fascinated by this technique; he collected Rembrandt prints and practiced engraving himself. The two artists quickly became close and began working together. Otto Henry Bacher returned to the United States in 1888. He settled in New York and became a member of the Lawrence Park artists’ colony, alongside Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase. He received a silver medal at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair for his engravings and was one of the founders of the Cleveland Academy of Fine Arts. He is considered one of the pioneers of modernism in his country.